Yeomans says that conducting his
research in the three philosophers’ country of
origin was critical for two important reasons.

Not only was he able to confer across Germany
with experts on the three, but he was also able
to examine how their philosophies could
apply to both modern Germany and the
United States.

“I was able to see the pattern of socialdivision playing out in a very different society,as Germany struggles with many of the sameissues as we do in the United States but inimportantly different ways,” he says. “Seeingthe issues arise in a third, historical context—in addition to ‘saddle period’ Germany andcontemporary American society—helpedme to get a sense of what is conceptuallybasic as opposed to what is determined byhistorical context.”Yeomans hopes that his research will helpdraw parallels between the social and politicalstruggles faced by Germans in the 18th and

19th centuries, and those we face today. “In
the United States at the moment, we face a
political divide between urban and rural
populations, between cosmopolitanism and
traditionalism, and between a competitive,
success-oriented capitalist economy and
deep rootedness in family and community,”
Yeomans says. “These tensions would not
have seemed so strange to the German
Idealists, who struggled with them at the
beginnings of the modern era. The hope is
that the conceptual resources they developed
for that struggle will be helpful to us as we try
to understand our own political moment.”
Yeomans makes these comparisons himself
in an upcoming forthcoming essay using
Hegelian concepts to interpret J.D. Vance’s

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family andCulture in Crisis.

Yeomans had his first serious forayinto historical research in 2013, under theguidance of history professors Charles Ingraoand Whitney Walton as part of the Provost’sFaculty Fellowship for Study in a SecondDiscipline. That research spawned the first oftwo projects he worked on in Munich, whichhe describes as “an attempt to constructa theory of historical subjectivity…[or]a theory of what it is like to approach theworld with the self-consciousness that one’sperspective is only one among many and alsowith the self-awareness that this perspectivecan and probably will change over time.” Heformed this theory using concepts set forthby German Idealist Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel, whose work Yeomans has researchedand written about extensively over the courseof his career.

Yeomans’ research on Hegel has already
culminated in two books that focus on
whether radical free will is possible and the
necessity of multiple forms of that free will
in people’s lives. His previous work on Hegel
seeped into the projects he worked on in
Munich, including his second focus, in which
he attempted to understand the differing
perspectives of three German Idealists,
Immanuel Kant, J.G. Fichte, and Hegel, each
of whom worked in the 18th and early 19th
centuries during the “saddle period” between
early and late modernity in Europe.

According to Yeomans, these three were
idealists “in the sense that they thought
reason was the structure of the world and
human beings should be optimistic about
their ability to…rationally organize a society.”
Each believed that a rational organization
of society should hold freedom as an
inalienable value, and they each attempted
to conceptualize what such a rational
organization of society would look like during
the pivotal historical era in which they lived.

To make sense of the divergent approachesthese three took to the visualization oftheir rational societies, Yeomans usedthe methodologies he learned during hisfellowship with the Department of Historyto take a deep dive into the changes in socialand economic structures that occurred duringKant, Fichte, and Hegel’s time.

Yeomans’ research was supported
primarily by the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation’s Fellowship for Experienced
Researchers, which was granted to him after
an application process including a project
proposal and peer review. The Humboldt
Foundation’s fellowship supported Yeomans’
travel throughout Germany, but he’s earned
lifelong support from the foundation for
future research in Germany.